


Shaken, Not Stirred

by AriWrote



Category: NG (Visual Novel), Spirit Hunter (Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Fake-Out Make-Out, No Spoilers, Spies & Secret Agents, mutual dumbasses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriWrote/pseuds/AriWrote
Summary: "AND THEY WERE SPIES.""Oh my god, they were spies."
Relationships: Ban Naomasa/Mulan Rosé
Kudos: 5





	Shaken, Not Stirred

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I've accepted the title is going to be bad. In my drafts, it's called totally spies. We're all just here for banter, I didn't promise I'd be smart about it.
> 
> Thank you to Hunny who read through it and called me out on my love affair with run-ons. They did their best. God knows if their best is enough to keep me in check.

Naomasa hardly has time to register what's happening before his legs give out from under him. He crashes to the ground with a heavy thud and a disheartening crack. Through the pain, he files it away for his boss as an all-expenses paid trip to a massage therapist. Maybe throw in a few vacation days if he plays it up. Assuming he lives, that is. The intercom in his ear buzzes with a jammed frequency. His partner's increasingly panicked voice drowns amidst a cacophony of white noise.

Naomasa’s head spins. His mouth tastes of metal. He’s not sure if he bit his tongue or his attacker knows him well enough to shove a knife between his teeth before he can talk. Through the fog, he can tell it is thankfully the former. Unfortunately, the sharp pain teasing at the base of his skull tells him that they chose to use their knife another way.

Beyond the headache inducing white noise, he hears a light, haughty laugh. The smell hits him a second later--a dangerously familiar perfume that he should have noticed as soon as she was close to him.

Rosé Mulan. 

For a spy so mysterious no research has ever even been able to uncover her past, you'd think she'd drop such a distinct perfume. His head pounds, he's almost certain he'd slammed it against the ground when Rosé had jumped him. 

"Losing your edge," she grins into the back of his head. Maybe it's saying something that Naomasa can imagine her cocksure smile even without seeing it. He's pretty sure that says something about how often they’re running into each other, but he uses his potential concussion as an excuse not to think about that.

"Lucky chance," he spits back around his already swelling tongue. As far as he can tell, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to need stitches, but if it does--he knows who the bill is going to.

Rosé hums, “Weren’t you the one who was all about luck? I’d hate to steal your mistress.”

“But you’re plenty fine stealing everything else, I see.”

“Oh, are you really still upset about that? How long has it even been?”

“Am I-?” Naomasa sputters out, and then pauses. “I would really rather not have this conversation with the marble flooring.”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s rather lovely considering whose house it’s in.” Despite this, he feels the knife move from the base of his skull and Rosé’s knee move from where it’d been digging into his spine. 

He groans as he manages to roll over onto his back. Rosé looks down at him, the slit in her dress shifted just enough that she can resheath the knife back into its place. She glances at him with a look that makes Naomasa shiver, though he does his best not to show it.

“A knife? Really? I thought we were past that.”

“I thought I could surprise you with a haircut.”

“You like my hair.”

Rosé does not respond to that, which Naomasa chooses to take as a win. She offers a hand to help him up. He takes it only after making sure she isn’t hiding something poisonous in her palm; Rosé doesn’t even hide the exaggerated eye roll she gives him.

He dust himself off, tries to straighten his tie and fails miserably. The intercom in his ear still buzzes, but Rosé plucking it out and crushing it underfoot helps the headache. It doesn’t help the panic his partner is likely trying to hide as he schmoozes with the target for the night, but that’s somebody else’s problem right now.

“I think I liked you better on the floor.” Rosé pouts, shoving Naomasa’s hands away from his tie and fixing it herself. 

“You and half my dates.”

“Maybe we’re onto something.” If Rosé’s hands linger a little longer on Naomasa’s lapel then necessary, well they’re both very talented liars. 

“God, I hope not,” Naomasa says. He throws a side-glance behind Rosé. He thought he’d heard something, but the moment passes in silence. He turns back to her. “So, I presume you aren’t here to play dress up? I mean, I appreciate it, but honestly-”

Rosé hums, like a cat deciding how much longer she wants to taunt a mouse before she goes in for the kill. It seems today she’s feeling merciful. “Sadly, no. Though I do so love helping you with those clothes of yours, I have my sights set elsewhere.”

She steps away, turning her back on Naomasa as though that was the end of their conversation. Her heels click against the tile with the finality of a goodbye as she moves deeper down the hall.

It’s a good thing Naomasa’s a stubborn man. It takes one, in his line of work. “Pity. You know how much fun it is for me to be pinned under your gaze.”

“More enjoyable than under my heel?” They fall into an easy step together, as though they’d been doing this forever. The house is huge, Naomasa knows. Labyrinthine, if he wanted to be fancy about it. Even still, Rosé walks the long and branching hallways like she’s memorized the blueprint. Probably has to be honest.

“Better for the back.” 

The walls are covered head to toe in paintings that might be genuine, considering the target’s tendency towards blackmarkets. A door occasionally breaks up the garish display, and every time the two of them do their best to disappear. They listen for life. Time and time again, they find none. 

“Age catching up to you?” 

“Not all of us can afford to hide our age as well as you.” Like his age, Naomasa does not hide his smile. “How many years now has it been your 25th birthday?”

Naomasa isn’t sure what to think. It’s either a lucky break or a trap. The profile of the target hadn’t given enough information to guess. There certainly had been a lot of obvious guards hidden amongst party-goers, but the man’s rich enough to have more hidden away.

Rosé stops. It is only his own reflexes that keep him from crashing into her. There is a part of him that expects an ambush, but when he strains his ears he can only hear the distant swell of the party. Maybe a few footsteps here and there, but nothing concrete enough to worry. “Is there a reason you’re following me?”

“Was there a reason you decided the best form of a greeting was to shove me onto the marble tile? Consider it payback.”

There’s a long silence. Before it can grow awkward, Naomasa shrugs.

“I suspect we’re looking for the same thing. Figured it might be worth it to test if I can’t pay you back for Venice.”

“Cocky.”

“Some people like it.”

Rosé scoffs. 

Off in the distance, a pair of footsteps echo loud enough to set their teeth on edge. They are distinct, different from the sloppy steps of a drunk guest wandering where they should not. Purposeful. Heavy. Naomasa thinks of the boots he’d spotted many of the security details wearing. 

Rosé looks at him with wide eyes which Naomasa might have misunderstood for panic if he was a younger man. There is an unspoken exchange between the two of them, a quick back and forth as they juggle plans-- trying to find the one that ends with neither of them compromised. 

They are stuck surrounded by nothing more than paintings and an ugly vase that gloats at him. He hopes distantly that a drunk might ‘accidentally’ shatter it, but he’s got enough self-control not to be that drunk. There are no doors to duck into, and the time for them to move forward is growing slimmer and slimmer. He wonders if Rosé has memorized the floor plan enough to recall if there’s an empty broom closet they can shove themselves into. Given the look in her eye, he suspects the first answer is ‘yes’ and the second is ‘but not close enough.”

Letting out a sigh that sounds as though the air is being punched out of her, Rosé says, “Well, if you’re going to be a pest and follow me around…”

With a sudden forceful movement, she grabs Naomasa by his collar and pulls him backwards. Her back hits the wall with a thud; instinctually Naomasa’s arms come forward, bracketing her in. She sinks just a little bit, just enough that he’s towering over her, blocking anyone from seeing her besides him. She seems small like this, unassuming--nothing like the woman who keeps a knife hidden in her garter. If he had not known how good she was before this, he damn well did now.

The footsteps grow louder. They’re definitely coming this way now.

“Make yourself useful.” Like a switch her voice shifts, taking on the lilting, giggling tone of the drunk and careless. The eyes that look up at him beg ‘please’. The gentle tug at his collar is a ‘hurry up’.

He does not need to be told twice.

He feels her fingers in his hair, at first tender. He can almost mistake it for encouragement, close his eyes and picture another life where the stakes aren’t so high. They are just as they seem, two drunk guests who have snuck off from a party. Their breaths are heavy with champagne, and now they are intent on testing whether or not they can get drunk merely on each other.

The snap of the hairband holding his ponytail in place does little to phase him as his hair waterfalls forward, obscuring both of their faces. The soft caress of her fingers trail down from his hair (always so cold, now welcome against his feverish face), moving across his jaw until they cup at his chin, tracing patterns like encouragement, like there is nothing more she could want but him. 

It is too much, too much for who they are; it hurts. 

It is almost a welcome relief when her hands make their way back to his hair, looping around the free strands. The softness gives way to a desperation as she pulls. The moan, muffled into Rosé’s mouth, is a wonderful deterrent for anyone who happens to be walking past.

Rosé’s leg loops around his own, he helps her by letting his own hand fall--trailing along the contours of her body-- to grasp at her exposed thigh, hiking it up higher. He is thankful when his fingers do not strike against cold metal. But of course, she is not an amateur.

One of her hands drops from where it is pulling at his hair to fist into his suit jacket, undoing whatever work she had done in trying to make him look proper. Naomasa does his best to pretend he does not miss it. She pulls him closer and he responds by falling into her, drowning, until it is indistinguishable where one begins and the other ends.

He hears the security detail only faintly. The woman makes a cursory attempt to stop them, but quickly realizes it is a hopeless cause. She moves along with some tired comment about clean-up duty not being something she’s paid for.

By the time they pull away, the hall has been silent of everything but their own soft breaths and moans for far longer than necessary. They’ll call it a safety precaution. They both gasp for air, ignoring the stalemate of their hands upon each other. The battle for who will let go first not yet won. 

The Rosé Naomasa finds when he dares to look at her is nothing like the put together woman he is used to seeing. Her eyes are dark and unfocused. There is smudge of red bleeding past her neatly lined lips. At some point, he does not know, his free hand had fallen to mimic her own, twisting throughout her hair. Several strands have fallen into her face. He absently reaches to brush them back behind her ear. 

“Did you see which way she went?” Naomasa offers, sounding more croak than whisper.

Rosé opens her mouth to speak, but her voice fails her. She bites at her lip. Her hand untangles from his hair, and he can feel her pitiful attempts to smooth the creases her grip left on his suit jacket. She offers a sharp nod in response. 

“Good. Uh- Good.” He isn’t sure what else to say. Belatedly, he realizes he’s still holding her thigh. He lets his finger slide away, does not let himself wonder if he left marks.

Rosé sags against the wall like it is the only thing holding her up. Naomasa envies her, forced as he is to try standing on his own two unstable legs. The air fills with nothing more than their own desperate attempts to bring their breathing back to even.

“Well,” Rosé says, when she finally has the voice to speak. “I suppose you’re more capable than I gave you credit for, old man. I didn’t think you’d be able to pull that off.”

“Excuse me?” Naomasa knows a deal when he sees one, and he’s more than happy to take the one Rosé is offering. A return to normalcy, a mutual agreement to acknowledge that what happened was nothing more than the ‘job’. He can do that. He’s good at his job. 

“Oh, you know. I just assumed you weren’t familiar with that technique. Did they use that cover often back in the old days?” Rosé lifts up from the wall, smoothing the wrinkles in her dress. Her thumb tries to wipe away the smudge of red, but it is not so easy to erase the marks the two of them have left on each other. She pushes past him, throwing a brief glance backwards as if to ask, “Well aren’t you coming?”

Let it never be said that Naomasa would turn down an invitation from a lady. “I don’t know. I imagine you’d be more familiar with it than me.”

They fall so easily back in step with each other. For a moment the two of them can forget that they are walking towards a scene where one of them leaves with the prize and the other is left to clean up the mess. It is a pattern they know well, a dance they can do blindfolded. Partners in crime until the journey ends and the status quo is returned. If perhaps they pause a little longer in some place than necessary, listen for the echo of footsteps with a little too much anticipation…Well, they’re both professional liars.

**Author's Note:**

> (If you want, imagine Rosé and Ban's spy partners getting drunk together and bitching about their useless partners. It's a very funny image. Tell me who you think it is.)


End file.
